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Need I provide a pithy introduction to The Two Towers, the second installment in The Lord of the Rings trilogy? It's more hobbits, orcs, swords, and sorcery, so if you sawThe Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (and why would you be reading this if you hadn't?), you know what to expect.

And it's expectations that director Peter Jackson has clearly found himself having to address in this movie. Given that all three films in the series were shot simultaneously, Jackson doesn't have much opportunity to introduce new stuff with each movie. We're well familiarized with the main characters and the primary settings, so much of the weight falls on the new people and creatures introduced in this episode to carry the story.

Before he discovered Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson's work looked more like it came from Troma. Dead Alive (aka Braindead) is the often-remade story of unslayable zombies, though Balme has a field day with them during the infamous half-hour scene which involves several dozen walking corpses, hundreds of gallons of red-tinted maple syrup (aka blood), and a lawn mower.

Need I provide a pithy introduction to The Two Towers, the second installment in The Lord of the Rings trilogy? It's more hobbits, orcs, swords, and sorcery, so if you saw The Fellowship of the Ring (and why would you be reading this if you hadn't?), you know what to expect.

And it's expectations that director Peter Jackson has clearly found himself having to address in this movie. Given that all three films in the series were shot simultaneously, Jackson doesn't have much opportunity to introduce new stuff with each movie. We're well familiarized with the main characters and the primary settings, so much of the weight falls on the new people and creatures introduced in this episode to carry the story.

Peter Jackson at his least explicable... we're talking a movie about puppets -- nasty, filthy puppets and gross folks in animal costumes. Nothing like a stuffed walrus humping a plush toy cat, is there? Sorry, Robert Smigel, but Jackson beats you by being years ahead of your TV Funhouse and three times as raunchy ("Do you think people are really interested in... nasal sex?"). Alas, this Chuck E. Cheese experience-gone-wrong (about a TV variety-hour group called The Feebles) is pretty stupid, though it has its moments of sarcastic giddiness. Still, I can't imagine seeing this under the influence of anything but the most powerful of narcotics.